10 Poems to Read Before You Leave School

We couldn’t let World Poetry Day pass without sharing some of our favourite poems with you. From classics to more recent additions, here are 10 poems to read before you leave school (in no particular order):

10 Poems to Read Before You Leave School – in honour of World Poetry Day:

1) Daffodils  – William Wordsworth

“I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils…” Read the full poem.

2) The Road Not Taken  – Robert Frost

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth…” Read the full poem.

3) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou

“The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom…” Read the full poem.

4) Sonnet 18 – William Shakespeare

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date…” Read the full poem.

5) Hour – Carol Ann Duffy

“Love’s time’s beggar, but even a single hour,

bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich.

We find an hour together, spend it not on flowers

or wine, but the whole of the summer sky and a grass ditch…” Read the full poem.

6) The Waste Land – T. S. Eliot

“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water…” Read the full poem.

7) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“At length did cross an Albatross,

Thorough the fog it came;

As if it had been a Christian soul,

We hailed it in God’s name…” Read the full poem.

8) Ozymandias – Percy Bysshe Shelley

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away…” Read the full poem.

9) The Raven – Edgar Allan Poe

“Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

‘Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,’ I said, ‘art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!’

Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore’….” Read the full poem.

10) The Sun Rising – John Donne

“Busy old fool, unruly sun,

Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?…” Read the full poem.